Saturday, 9 February 2013

Deliberately misleading by choice of words is worse than outright lying

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Some people seem to suppose that misleading others by cunningly-chosen words is not as bad as an outright untruth; but surely deliberate misleading is a multiply-compounded lie: first you lie by misdirection, then you lie about the fact that you were lying, then you lie to deny that this is exactly what you were knowingly doing as part of a plan to be able to deny the lie.

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Furthermore, since this type of calculated deception is itself nowadays admired as managerial competence - even quadruple lying is celebrated as wisdom...

This constituting yet further evidence that we are living in times are quite extraordinary depravity.